India, April 18 -- So used have we become to the current standard of comments, posts and speeches emanating from the White House that we forget the great thoughts and words that have come from previous occupants of that august residence of the US president.

Heading this list is the all-time great Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln (1863) and, less known but no less moving, his Second Inaugural. Lincoln said at the end of that very brief address, "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may ...